Menu
  • About us
    • Company
    • Team
    • Career
    • References
    • Partners
    • Contact
  • Products
    • Earth Observation metadata enhancer
    • Temperaturdaten
    • LST-Data Client
    • Trainings
  • Services
    • actinia – geoprocessing in the cloud
    • Geospatial and EO data analysis
    • CORONA spy satellite data
    • maps.mundialis
    • Web Map Services
    • GIS Development
    • Open Source GIS
  • Markets
    • Remote Sensing for Agriculture
    • Satellite Images for Forest and Land Cover Restoration
    • Glass fibre route planning – FTTH
    • Copernicus and Sentinel
  • News & Blog
    • News
    • Blog
    • Satellite image of the month
  • English English
  • Deutsch Deutsch
  • About us
    • Company
    • Team
    • Career
    • References
    • Partners
    • Contact
  • Products
    • Earth Observation metadata enhancer
    • Temperaturdaten
    • LST-Data Client
    • Trainings
  • Services
    • actinia – geoprocessing in the cloud
    • Geospatial and EO data analysis
    • CORONA spy satellite data
    • maps.mundialis
    • Web Map Services
    • GIS Development
    • Open Source GIS
  • Markets
    • Remote Sensing for Agriculture
    • Satellite Images for Forest and Land Cover Restoration
    • Glass fibre route planning – FTTH
    • Copernicus and Sentinel
  • News & Blog
    • News
    • Blog
    • Satellite image of the month
  • English English
  • Deutsch Deutsch

HERMOSA Bulletin: Building HERMOSA with Free and Open Source Software


20. April 2021 | Category General

Software is codified knowledge and in essence a text file with a number of commands. Whatever we do nowadays, making a phone call, driving a car, booking a hotel or restoring ecosystems would not be possible without software. The software landscape can be divided into two fundamental sections: proprietary and free software. Why is this so?

At the end of the 70s of the 20 th century only large organisations like governments or big corporations were using computers and in those days they were physically large and extremely expensive. At the time the money to be made with computers lay in the hardware, not the software. The software on these mainframes was provided for free so that the hardware would do something once delivered and not cause a lot of frustration.

However, around this time private companies like Microsoft and Apple were in the process of revolutionising the way the general public was interacting with computers and there is the famous quote from Bill Gates saying: “A computer on every desk, and in every home, running Microsoft software.” It also eventually became clear that these personal computers could run very different, personalised applications and it was again Bill Gates who in 1981 wrote an open letter urging developers not to give away their software for free because it had a value in itself and Bill Gates was maybe fearing he would not make money.

On the opposite side of this thinking were people like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds who thought quitedifferently about software. They were more in line with the realisation first voiced in the 19 th century by an Austrian noblewoman called Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach who said: “Knowledge is the only commodity that grows when you share it.”

There is a large community of individuals and companies who develop software made available under a free license. The companies are paying their developers and making a profit. Once the profit has been made they can afford to release the software under a free license so that others can build on top of this. This is also happening with the development of HERMOSA: we are utilizing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that is already available and improving it with the money that we get paid to build HERMOSA.

Therefore we as a company can exist, paying our staff, while providing great functionality in the form of Free Software to the general public. Our goal is to deliver technology, that everybody is able to use, improve and re-distribute. Besides this, we of course offer all services related to HERMOSA.

Please contact sales@hermosa.earth to get started today!

reposted from: https://hermosa.mundialis.de/news/bulletin-kw-16/

Comments are currently closed.

Follow Us

Contact

mundialis GmbH & Co. KG
Kölnstrasse 99
53111 Bonn

Phone: +49 (0)228 / 387 580 80
Fax: +49 (0)228 / 962 899 57

E-Mail: info [at] mundialis [dot] de

Latest News

  • ++ Eine neue Heimat für Actinia ++

    Tuesday January 24th, 2023
  • Positive towards the future – Management changes at mundialis

    Tuesday October 4th, 2022
  • Recap of FOSS4G 2022 in Florence

    Friday September 16th, 2022
  • FOSS4G 2022 in “La Bella” – Greetings from Florence!

    Thursday July 14th, 2022
  • VALE project successfully completed

    Tuesday June 21st, 2022
View all News

Blog

  • Satellite image of the month – January – Yalu River (People’s Republic of China and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) 2. January 2023
    Yalu River – People’s Republic of China and Democratic People’s ...
  • Satellite image of the month – December – Super Pit gold mine (Australia) 1. December 2022
    Super Pit gold mine – Australia, recorded by the Sentinel-2A ...
  • Satellite image of the month – November – Kufra-Oases (Libya) 1. November 2022
    Kufra-Oases – Libya, recorded by the Sentinel-2A satellite on March ...
View all Blog Posts

Copyright © 2015-2021 mundialis GmbH & Co. KG

Imprint Privacy

Theme created by PWT. Powered by WordPress.org